She shook her head. She didn’t need this from him. “No. I don’t think so. I’m just going to go.”
She was only three steps from her car when he caught her. He took hold of her elbow, but he didn’t spin her around the way she expected. Instead, he moved to stand in front of her, to face her, stil
l
holding on.
“You’re too good for this place, Chelle. Not unwanted.” His face had gentled. The look in his eyes was one she’d seen only in her dreams. She hadn’t thought he had it in him, that compassion. “There’s a huge world out there that you need to see before you even try to fit in here. With me.”
“I’m not too good,” she began, hating the sting of tears welling. King stopped her from saying anything more with a finger pressed to her lips.
“You are the best woman I’ve ever known, Chelle—”
“The easiest, you mean.” Because that he couldn’t deny.
“That, too,” he said, his thumb tracing her lips, her cheekbone, her temple. “If I could keep you here in my bed—”
“Or on the porch, in a parking lot, at the side of the road—”
“In my bed,” he emphasized, “forever, I would. But you’d wake up one day and realize you were wasting your life screwing me when you could be making it with some Harvard MBA.”
“It wasn’t just screwing.”
He cupped her face, dropped his forehead to hers. “I know.”
“This is so hard, King. It shouldn’t be this hard.”
“Doing the right thing usually is.”
Did he really believe that? Was letting her go hard for him at all? Would she be able to walk away if she knew that it was?
“I don’t even know where I’m going,” she said with a smal
l
laugh.
“You’ll figure it out.”
“What if I don’t?” She lost everything in New Orleans. She had no one. She was truly on her own. “What if I mess up? What if I end up being stupid?” She couldn’t help but worry. She was so close to having everything go right after it being so wrong for years.
“You won’t.” His hands were in her hair, threaded there, holding her. “But if you do, you call me.”
“You don’t have a phone!”
“I’ll get one. Cal
l
Red. I’ll give him the number.”
“Oh, King,” she said, closing her eyes so he wouldn’t see how sad it made her to lose him.
He didn’t speak but brought his mouth close and touched it to hers, his lips, then just the edge of his teeth, then the tip of his tongue. She opened her mouth and kissed him with al
l
of her love, with the parts that wanted to hit him for being so crass and vulgar, with the parts that wanted to soothe the little boy hiding inside the man. It was so easy to tell him how much she would miss him, so much easier to do it this way—lips pressed, tongues wet and seeking, hands gripping to bruise—than with a verbal explanation.
She was the one to finally step out of his embrace and into the future. Her eyes were as damp as his were red when she kissed her own fingertips and placed them on his cheek. He held her wrist for longer than she should have stayed, but then he let her go. He even opened her car door, closing it once she’d gathered her skirt inside.
“It’s for the best, Chelle,” he said.
“I know,” she answered, and this time it wasn’t a lie.
Forty-two
“T hat’s it? You’re just going to let her go?” King watched
Chelle
drive away, the back end of the Mustang obscured by the dust thrown up by the car’s wheels. He didn’t have an answer for his cousin’s question. He didn’t know what to say. Was he going to let her go? Had she been nothing to him but a fine piece of ass? Could he have had more with her if he’d ever given half an effort to finding out? Was he going to let her go?
He shrugged, not sure of his voice.
“How far up your ass is your head? The girl is mad for you.”
Woman. Not girl. “She’s mad, period. Living here as long as she did when she had nothing tying her to this hellhole.”
“She had you.”
“And now she doesn’t.
C’est la vie
.” King wasn’t going to talk about it anymore. He had other things he needed to say. Things he’d been holding on to a lot of years. “It’s good she decided to go.”
“Good for her? Or for you?”
“Both, for certain. I’ve got some things to deal with, and they’ll go down easier this way.”
“I don’t know, boo.” Simon glanced toward the house, where King knew Micky waited.
“Alone isn’t always the best way.”
“You’ve had some experience with that then.” King didn’t even know what it was that Simon did these days, what it was that made it possible for him to come up with ninety thousand dollars when King had asked. That was the distance between them. Simon nodded. “I have. After the service, I worked places that put me in a lot of danger. Then I took a position that sent me into even worse. I never wanted to bring anyone else into that. Felt it would be too hard to lose them, selfish to put them in harm’s way just so I wouldn’t be alone. And so I was. I am. I was.”
Interesting. “How did she get you to change your mind?”
“By showing me the other side. I’d rather have what time I can with her than no time at all. The thought that she could’ve died kills me, but it doesn’t take away how being with her lifts me up.”
After a long quiet moment, King said, “And she feels the same.”
Simon laughed. “If she doesn’t, I’m going to be in a world of hurt.”
More hurt than doing time for a crime he hadn’t committed. More hurt than hating the one man who’d been there for him through all their years of silence. King wondered if it was too late to go after Chelle, but his heart knew it was too soon.
“About the money—”
“It doesn’t matter—”
“I have a son.” The words were out. The relief, monstrous.
“I didn’t know…”
King laughed once. “Neither did I until three years ago. He’s thirteen now.”
“I’ve got all the usual questions, King, but you telling me what you want me to know is probably best.”
He wanted Simon to know everything, but even King hadn’t gotten that far figuring it out. Getting answers had been worse than realizing how much he regretted the things he’d missed.
“She was a woman who put me up for a while. Before I got the trailer moved in, the water well and septic dug, the electricity working. I met her at Red’s. Gina. I honestly can’t remember much more.”
Simon frowned. “The money wasn’t for a lawyer, was it? To set visitation rights, or fight for custody?”
“Oh, hell no, boo. I’m not father material. At least…not then. Probably not even now. For a while it looked like my adventures in parenting were going to be over before they got started.”
“He was sick.”
King nodded. “I knew he was mine when she showed me his picture. Remember that one Ma used to tease me about? In third grade?”
“Where your ears looked like a jackrabbit’s poking up through your hair, and your shirt was inside out?”
“That’s why my wardrobe’s nothing but white Ts. And I tear off the tags. Hard to tell the difference,” he joked, then sobered. “Besides, I got used to wearing the same thing all the time in the pen.”
“I never asked you about any of that, about those years.”
“Nothing about it to say.”
“What’s his name? Your son.”
“Calvin. Cal.” Just voicing it…God, his throat. His heart.
“Is he okay?”
“He’s getting there.” King didn’t mention how many nights he’d spent in waiting rooms at the Texas Medical Center, never going into the boy’s room, seeing glimpses of tubes and monitors and a tiny body swallowed up by sheets and blankets when he’d walked by the door.
“He couldn’t have got the treatment he needed here. He had to go to Houston. His mother had raised some of the money, barbecue fund-raisers and bake sales, and then donations from friends and families from his school and church. His grandparents.”
“But it wasn’t enough.”
“I don’t know why she thought I could get it,” he said, choking on his laugh. “If he’d never got sick, I’d never have known he was out there. I don’t know if it would’ve been easier that way.”
“Sounds like he’s got a lot of caring folks around him.”
“He does. A great father, even. Just not me.” Damn, but that was hard to say.
“Does he need more? Do you?”
“I’m not asking for more, Simon.”
“I know. But I’m offering.”
“Well, keep your offer. I’ve got the trees about to produce, and I’m going back to Delcambre to work with a shrimper I know until then. I’ll save what I can. If Gina doesn’t need anything more, I’ll put it aside. A college fund maybe. Or one day I might have enough to really do a workover on the well.”
“And somewhere in there you’ll go after Paschelle?”
“Not sure I’ll have time.”
“Then you make time. Make time for me, too. Twenty years is long enough for this Hatfield-and-McCoy bullshit.”
“We’re family, boo. That analogy doesn’t work.”
“It works if you know what I mean, and that I’m serious.”
“I do. It’s nice knowing someone out there who has my back. Next time I go after a judge who’s a criminal as wel
l
as corrupt, I’ll do it on more sleep and less booze. Maybe then I won’t need the save.”
“It’s what I do,” Simon said with a shrug that reeked of humble. But that was it. King wasn’t going to press for more, for answers Simon didn’t want to give—even if he’d had his fill of secrets. “You do it well, cuz. I hope they pay you what you’re worth.” He dug into his pocket, spun his keys around on one finger, and palmed them.
“You heading home?” Simon asked.
“Figured I’ve kept you long enough. You’ve got some miles out there calling your name.” He headed for his truck, stopped and turned as a thought struck him. His grin nearly split his face. “And I’ve got a buried treasure calling mine.”
Forty-three
“A re you ready to go back to New York?” Simon asked after slamming his truck’s tailgate and closing the bed cover over his stash of supplies. Micky stood there watching him, her hair in a ponytail, a smile on her face, a sparkle in her eyes that a few days ago he took as a warning to keep his distance but now was a beacon beckoning him.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m ready or not, does it? I came to see Lisa. I’ve done that. It’s time to go home.”
Nothing about her accident, Lisa’s kidnapping, Bear’s death, how close she’d come herself. She made it sound like the days she’d been here had been a relaxing vacation rather than the truth of what they were. The attempt on her life didn’t even seem to faze her.
He wondered if the shock would hit later, if it would send her to seek counseling, or if she had sectioned off those memories, that experience, and lopped it off like overlong hair.
He wanted to know the truth of how she was doing, how she was dealing. He didn’t want to put her on a plane. “Was your father glad to hear from you? That you’re okay, and on your way back?”
“He never knew I wasn’t okay. The physical accident-on-purpose part anyway. He knew the underpants thing was a symptom of a much larger problem. He told my intended that there would be no wedding, so at least I got his attention.”
“Or the pictures did, anyway.”
“According to Jane, the pictures were dark and blurry and incredibly grainy even after they were cleaned up. The ass could have belonged to anyone wearing that skirt.”
He doubted Michelina Ferrer would have been seen in public wearing something so easily purchased as she wore now. He looked at her again in her twelve-dollar sneakers, her twenty-dollar jeans, the oversized black polo marked down to half price because of the sun-bleached streaks on the shoulders.
He couldn’t believe she was the same woman from the bil
l
board, the one who’d stared down into his tiny patio and refused to let him give up, who’d told him that he’d only been doing his job, that Stella Banks getting hurt was the sort of collateral damage no one could prevent or anticipate, and that if Eli McKenzie was man enough to deal, he’d better be.
He nodded, trying to remember what she’d just said, or what his life had been like a week ago without her. “Good. That’s good. I’m glad.”
“Glad about what?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I do know. I’m glad about a lot of things. It’s just—”
“What?” she asked, coming closer. “What are you glad about?”
Ask him something easy. “That Lisa was found safe. That she and Terrill are going to get the hell out of here.” Micky had told him she’d convinced them to come to New York, at least for a while.
“I’m glad about that, too,” she said, smiling. “They need to be safe, to be with each other away from here.”
Away from their loss that was wrapped up in so much anger and pain. He got that. “I’m glad King’s going to stay on at Le Hasard. At least for now.”
“Until he goes after Paschelle, you mean.”
“Yeah. I was thinking he won’t be sticking around here long.”